Open thread June 27-July 1

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I’m back. A huge thank you to Jeremy for holding the fort while I was in Western Australia.

As an exercise in expanding your mind I can recommend listening to the talkback on ABC Perth, if you ever suspected that the populations on each coast of our nation didn’t really understand each other this will remove any doubt.

I note with a mixture of modest and grim satisfaction the resort by Ms Gillard to the formulation: what Tony Abbott likes to call a carbon tax.

I’d like to think that my campaign writing to senior ministers and blogging about the matter of the so-called carbon tax and its role in polluter-driven propaganda campaign has finally borne fruit. I’ve no evidence of my role in this at all, but I’m going to take this as a modest win.

It would have been far better of course if, four months ago, Ms Gillard had figuratively slapped down the first person to misname the ETS a carbon tax, and in an erudite and teacherly way, explained why, rather than inviting people to think of her as a liar, but I suppose it’s better late than never. (In this case, the advantage is only marginal).

Unsurprisingly this morning, when LNP apologists on #theirABC, Fran Kelly and Michelle Grattan, came on this morning they were not slow in endorsing the LNP counter-attack on Gillard as being “tricky”. Grattan made the rather absurd claim that her standing as untrustworthy with the public made this a bad move — whereas as I saw it — this perception — if true — means there is no real downside to this. Most of those convinced that Gillard is a liar will continue to do so. Those not wedded to the idea may put an asterisk next to it. Grattan asserted that if she’d been seen as honest, it would have been easier, but this would have had downside risk as some might have changed their minds.

The real problem now is consistency. Spending four months smiling and implicitly endorsing the idea that you are shifty, uttering the phrase “effectively a carbon tax” makes it hard to backtrack. I did note though that if nothing else, it stopped Grattan and Kelly from uttering the term “carbon tax” other than in scare quotes, and that is a small victory. It was all “carbon price” this morning. Gillard’s turn on this was a metaphoric IED under the wheels of The Murdochracy‘s shock and awe propaganda campaign.

Yesterday, the boltinator was suggesting that barnaby joyce deserved an apology for the fuss after he said the US could default.

I’ve been pondering it.

No. I think he’s wrong. At a stretch, the ridiculous might try to claim he was technically right. If congress refuses to vote to increase the federal debt ceiling then yes, the government could theoretically run out of credit and not be able to pay its loans in the short term. Assuming the prez doesn’t just order treasury to print money.

But it’s a mad situation. For barnaby’s suggestion to stray across the line from silly to technically credible, we’d have to assume that he somehow foresaw the republican/tea-party alliance using its numbers to actually force the executive NOT to pay its bills. Because that’s what is happening. The US can pay its loans. There’s no actual problem with its ability to do so. There’s no reason at all why it would need to default. It’s just that the loons in one party have decided to play a game of chicken and use a self-imposed credit limit to wedge the president. Just like they previously threatened to shut down the government in order to wedge the president. They don’t need to. They’re just using any weapon they can to try to roll back health care (sorry – ‘reduce government spending’).

It’s a pity nobody saw it coming, or congress could have just added another trillion to the debt ceiling in the last session and this never would have happened.

But if joyce DID see this coming, then kudos. Maybe he was misquoted, and he didn’t just say the US would default, but that “republicans would try to force the whitehouse to default in order to pursue a short-term political agenda”. Did anyone get the full quote?

Meanwhile, as I understand it, even the republicans’ OWN budget requires that the debt ceiling be lifted. So it’s not really a fundamental difference in policy, it’s just another threat like the one to cut off supply.

And people say the US’ system of government is broken. Oh, hang on … that was me.

I like that podcast a very great deal. I’m not even particularly into motor racing – I just like listening to them yack.

I few weeks back I sent gareth a congrats about an episode. I was in a fairly bad mood when I put it on, but by the end of the episode I had a grin on my face and I was even hopping around the room to their song about the jensen ff (front like and isso, back like a bubble, don’t touch me unless you’re looking for trouble …)

MoC @ 64
Sniffpetrol and Gareth Jones on Speed (the podcast) are favourites of mine, I sat listening to their Le Mans Podcast with a smile on my face as I had some very non PC racing car noise blasting from one ear to the other.

Bolt has insinuated Tony Windsor has bought property in the Coonamble district for reasons including that the land was under coal-seam gas exploration licenses. Never mind the Oz article he cited mentioning that it has NO information that the properties in question actually are in the lease.

I also notice he pulled a published comment referring to to Gina and News Ltd agendas driving his content…what a weakling.

I look forward to his coverage of revelations of pseudo-skeptic Dr Willie Soon’s funding sources.

If you go to his home blog you will see his piece on the Canberra climate scientist death threats had comments disabled but he got a lot of pingbacks from people linking to his post, they were nearly all skeptic blogs.

Today PVO uncritically repeats Hockey’s line about the public service growing by 20,000 (with no mention that a good chunk of that is army and defence reserve). How many times does the OO have to repeat that lie to make it true?

One of the world’s most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies.

Dr Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for his view that global warming and the melting of the arctic sea ice is caused by solar variation rather than human-caused CO2 emissions, and that polar bears are not primarily threatened by climate change.

But according to a Greenpeace US investigation, he has been heavily funded by coal and oil industry interests since 2001, receiving money from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Insitute and Koch Industries along with Southern, one of the world’s largest coal-burning utility companies. Since 2002, it is alleged, every new grant he has received has been from either oil or coal interests.

[Oh, and don’t get me started on his ridiculous basic mistake about “Monckton, a mathematician”.]

In other words, Gerard calls for calm whilst we tolerate corporate puppets and self proclaimed ‘experts’ like Monkton telling us horseshit and poisoning the minds of people who like their ‘science’ nice and simple, following their corporate masters in the delusion they’re standing up for what’s best..

The man has the endorsement of Alan Jones…a person who would gladly sell you some laser beam internet

Carbon pricing and the Gambling legislation are the two most important political debates right now…the media has served us very poorly if people honestly believe either of these men have the moral or intellectual stature to be credible voices in either

The head of one of Australia’s biggest banks has thrown his support behind the proposed carbon tax. National Australia Bank chief executive Cameron Clyne says there is bipartisan agreement that carbon levels need to be cut by 5 per cent by 2020.

{…}

“If you’re asking for an economic assessment of the two, the carbon price followed by an ETS (emissions trading scheme) is economically superior to the direct action policy,” he said.

Clyne was slightly untidy as both are phases in the ETS, but the distinction is clear.

Undaunted, the ABC went on to verbal CRA’s Tom Albanese the same way:

But the chief executive of Rio Tinto, Tom Albanese, has warned the Federal Government to be cautious in its approach to the carbon tax.

Mr Albanese told a business lunch in Perth that it is courageous and noble the Government is trying to take the lead, but global carbon emissions will not be reduced unless the United States, China and India also play a part.

He says the Government should refrain from experimenting with its economy and any carbon price should be modest.

But #theirABC’s trolling for the right for the day wasn’t done. On PM they ran an item Can Iran’s nuclear ambitions be halted? Michel Rubin {of ther American Enterprise Institute} shares his thoughts on what can be done

Rubin was in Sydney “as a guest of the Australian/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council”. Gosh, I wonder what he had to say, speaking on behalf of a state that reportedly possesses about 200 nuclear devices, has kidnapped and imprisoned from another state the whistleblower Vanunu, complaining about its fears that Iran might come to possess them?

Nothing at all about this, or the fact that Israeli businesses were themselves breaching US sanctions on Iran. And did the interviewer thgink to raise these questions, or was he content to allow Ruben to skate by, as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, speaking of how troubling Iran’s energy development posture was?

Very much the latter, at least in the broadcast sections. It turns out, apparently (though I haven’t listened to it) than in the full unexpurgated interview, there is, according to #theirABC’s producer, some reference to this, but sadly, it didn’t make the on-air cut.

That’s bound to be a mere coincidence at least in the mind of those ready to accept that George W Bush was also misunderstood.

One the blot failed to published my comment that he is employed to tout Gina’s opinion instead of being paid for his own.

Second, interseting discussion over some beers this evening that surronded the carbon tax. It started with one of the regular conservatives mentioning destructive mess it would be. Out of 6 people there it was probably 4 1/2 against it, the one being me and the half being another guy who had some knowledege about the use of solar panels. To cut the story short it went onlong the lines ofthe use of alternative energy sources and their cost and the idea that as more people take up the option of using renewable energy source the cheaper it will be. After about three beers of discussion the mood had changed and there was now about 4 out the 6 either forthe benifit of a carbon tax/ets or indifferent to it, maybe the morning will tell a different story.

The really interesting part about the whole discussion was that no one bought up the issue of climate change.